Winning Big Money In Poker Tournaments Means You Need to Make Small Wins First.

Have you ever been knocked out of a tournament and felt good about it? Well if you actually make the money, you should feel very good about because you are on the way to using other players money to try again? Of course you understand by now that poker is anything but a simple game, and tournament strategy requires even more layered thinking for long term success and profitability.

One of the most important factors when analyzing your poker tournament strategy is making the money. For those players who are in a more comfortable position with their bankroll, then this is probably not the way to play becuase it will eventually cost them a large payout. A lot of rounders and pros will play more aggressively in this situation because they want to make the money with a healthy stack.

For most online players though, this simply isn’t the case and making the money should be of paramount importance. The reason for this is because when you are actually building a bankroll, the best money to play with is that of your opponents, not your own. I call this OPM, or Other Players’ Money, and if you are just starting out in online poker, then OPM is your only way to long term success, save for extraordinary luck.

The easist way to start using Other Players`Money is start placing in tournaments, turning at least a small profit in every one you can. It is true you may sacrifice a bigger payout, but when starting out it makes sense to tighten up for a few critical reasons. Most importanatly is the fact that your competition is so weak, they will literally send you deep into the tournament, simply by playing extra tight.

Secondly, the attrition rate in low limit tournaments is quick sometimes, that you can count on your actually entry fee to be worth at least double what you paid.

Listen, by playing a TAG game you can make the money at least 15% of the time, and some of those times you will actually be in ahealthy position to make the final table as well.

Now adopting this philosophy normally requires tight-aggressive Harrington style play, but it’s not so easy to stick to that style while witnessing the foolish players around you and their lucky, but growing stacks. Getting caught up in that though, means you are playing on your lack of emotional control, and not using a solid winning strategy.

It all comes down to numbers and probabilities. If you play tight aggressive, you will make the money often enough to build your OPM bankroll, and then play risk free forever more. Now, what do you really think is more profitable?

Marty Smith has video reviews of all the poker calculators so you can see them being used before you decide which one is right for you. He also has a free poker tournament strategy video series that is free poker training just for signing up.